Welcome to the website of Building Blocks: Interactive Conversations with LGBTQ Families!

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Building Blocks?

Building Blocks: Interactive Conversations with LGBTQ Families is a series of interactive video documentaries about families created by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer parents.

This project aims to inspire LGBTQ families and LGBTQ parents-to-be by sharing resources and stories about baby-making and family planning; talking about anonymous donors, known donors, adoption and/or other family-making methods with kids and developing empowering creation stories; combatting heteronormativity; gender identity and parenting names; legal issues like second parent adoption; DIY at-home baby-making, fertility specialists and pregnancy; navigating the adoption process; and discussing answers to this question: How can the world change to be more inclusive and celebratory of our (LGBTQ!) families?

Who is this project for?

How can I watch it?

All interactive videos can be found right here on our website! The first one is available now: A conversation with the Chen-Hayes family! A multi-family conversation is coming in October, 2017… Stay tuned!

How does it work?

Each video is interactive: A documentary conversation is presented in a series of short videos, usually about 1-2 minutes each. At the end of each segment, there is a choice (text on screen). Touch/click your choice to choose where the conversation goes next!

Why make an interactive video?

The idea here is that you choose where the conversation goes next, and the hope is that this interactive strategy inspires community-building and conversation. For individual viewers, this allows each person to see the content most relevant to their interests/needs. For community groups, this inspires conversation (Example: “When the choices were ‘Parent Names’ or ‘Legal Protection,’ everyone yelled out ‘Legal Protection’ — Is this something we should talk more about?”)

Of course, there are drawbacks to interactivity… How do you know if you’ve seen all there is to see? How do you know how ‘big’ the backend of an interactive project is? To answer this, please find an interactive diagram posted with each video online. Within the project itself, hit the “X” in the top left corner to access the “Story Map,” which has links to all video clips in a given project. That said, please don’t feel that you need to “see it all” — part of the joy of this kind of work is choosing how the story unfolds.

Are you still filming?

Yes! Contact Laura Zaylea for more information. Laura (dot) Zaylea (at) Temple (dot) edu, or use the “Contact” form on this website!